Fate Will Force Your Hand
by SubRosa7
Summary: Arthur had been warned that if he did not restore magic to a place of honor within Camelot, someday his hand would be forced. That day is at hand.


Title: Fate Will Force Your Hand

Summary: Arthur had been warned that if he did not restore magic to a place of honor within Camelot, someday his hand would be forced. That day is at hand.

Arthur was not his father. If he had been, then Druid messengers who now stood before the round table would be in irons, on their way to the pyre. If Arthur had been Uther, then these messengers would probably never have come to Camelot to bear word of Morgana and her army of Death Spirits. The warning was welcome. The palpable attitude of persecuted smugness was not.

"Your knights cannot meet her in battle, King of Camelot." The Druid cautioned, "Only those with strong magic can face her without fear of losing themselves to the songs of the Spirits. To save your kingdom, you must embrace those of us whom you and your family have persecuted and burned in the hundreds."

Arthur clenched his jaw, taking time to master his anger. Uther would not have paused, and he would see Arthur's hesitation as weakness.

The weight of that imagined ghostly disapprobation no longer crushed Arthur. His father Uther may have ruled alone, but he had not ruled himself. Arthur surrounded himself with Gwen, his knights, and even Merlin. They watched him, they supported him, and they would not shut up whenever they felt that he was doing something wrong. Alright, so that last was mainly Merlin, but Gwen, too, sometimes. More politely. And sometimes even Gwaine, less politely. And then there was Gaius, who almost never TOLD Arthur that he thought the young King was doing something wrong, but he did something with his eyebrows which quite eloquently expressed disapproval.

In any case, the ultimate decisions were Arthur's, for good or ill. But being supported by people who saw him as a good King but also a fallible man, it enabled Arthur to keep his temper in check. Though it was a near-run thing. Arthur HATED having his hand forced. The King did not want to think about magic; it had claimed the lives of both of his parents, and had been used to threaten Camelot many times. Was even now threatening Camelot, again. Added to that, it was but a fortnight since the LAST time magic had come up, by someone else trying to tell Arthur what to do.

He and his knights (and Merlin) had been riding through the Valley of the Fallen Kings, when they happened by an old woman being attacked by brigands. They'd saved her, then she'd had the ingratitude to respond to that by warning Arthur that the time would soon come when he would either have to restore magic to a place of honor in Camelot, or risk his hand being forced by fate. Then she'd had the audacity to simply disappear, as if by magic. Arthur heard the echo of the unwelcome words in the old woman's querulous voice as he considered the Druids in front of him. Gwen shifted slightly beside him, and Merlin stiffened behind him.

'Don't act in haste.' They both told him, without words. If he'd had only himself to account for, Arthur would have sent the druids on their way with a sharp lecture that they knew nothing of Camelot, of her bold knights and the wrongs that had been done to her. He would have rebuffed their offer of assistance in no uncertain terms, and trusted in the strength of loyal arms. But Arthur did know when to resist one of his impulses for the good of Camelot, whatever Uther's ghost may have thought.

"You need not fear reprisal for your actions this day." Arthur told their young spokesman, "Not for bearing this message, nor for demanding reward for offering your aid, when you come also seeking my protection."

The younger Druid seemed abashed. One of his older fellows nodded to Arthur, unwillingly impressed.

"We have not the power to face the Spirit Army ourselves, 'tis true." He admitted to the round table. "And not even Emrys may be able to save us. But with him, we - and Camelot - have a chance."

Emrys. That name again. Spoken on this peaceable Druid's lips as if it was salvation. Arthur remembered the first time he had heard the name of Emrys spoken aloud. It had been torn from Morgana's sharp tongue as if it were poison. A poison which she had clearly feared.

'The enemy of my enemy,' Arthur wondered to himself. Then he glanced subtly to his most learned counselors, Gaius and Geoffrey of Monmouth. Their unobtrusive nods confirmed the Druids' tale; this was a fight which they did not believe that Arthur could win without resorting to magic.

"Very well." He spoke at last, Gwen's hand clasping his under the table in silent support, at the same time as Gwaine kicked him. Merlin, oddly, was silent.

"Very well." Arthur said again, "I will let your people aid Camelot, with my thanks. They need not fear death or imprisonment." Arthur hesitated, "Nor even banishment, provided if they threaten not my people."

The Druid who had spoken first did not seem pleased with that offer, but he held his silence. The elder Druid nodded his acceptance, before pressing, "And Emrys?"

Arthur frowned, casting an irritated glance over his shoulder at Merlin. His manservant had chosen the most inopportune time to strike up a conversation with, of all people, George the Boring Replacement Manservant, and Eshild, a young serving girl bringing water to the travel-weary Druids. George assisted Arthur when Gaius could not do without Merlin, but that didn't mean that Merlin - or Arthur- generally sought the fellow out for advice or a chat. And to the best of Arthur's knowledge, Merlin didn't know Eshild. Arthur only knew her name because Gwen was annoyingly insistent about such things, and what's more...

Gwen cleared her throat,and Arthur turned his attention back to the life and death matters of state which Merlin had annoyingly distracted him from.

"Er, yes, Emrys." Arthur stalled, thinking again. The Druids were one thing...they were largely peaceful. Particularly when one wasn't hunting them down and killing them. Druids had been coming and going through Camelot freely in the years since Arthur had become King. They didn't use magic, or at least didn't use it blatantly openly, and Arthur had ordered his men not to harass them.

But Emrys...he was an unknown quantity. Terrifically powerful, according to Geoffrey. The Druids were one thing...but a sorcerer who could rival Morgana for power, loose in Arthur's kingdom? Arthur might just be trading a known danger for an unknown one.

As Arthur deliberated, a cold wind swept through the room, whispering of Arthur's worst fears and how very sweet death could be. It raised goose pimples on the King's arms and neck. Gwen gasped, and more than one knight reached down to grasp his sword. No one spoke.

Except Merlin.

"Right, then." Arthur's manservant declared firmly. "Aelred," He addressed the older Druid, "Find every member of your group who can spell past the influence of the Death Spirits' songs, and have them make ready." Merlin's eyes flickered around the room, as Arthur goggled at him. The King would never have believed that even Merlin would usurp his authority in this way. Tell the King off in private, certainly. Arthur had come to expect it, even appreciate it, at times. But this...Arthur didn't even know what to think.

Arthur's gaze rested on Merlin, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gaius shift. The old physician appeared more worried in this moment than he had upon been hearing of their imminent demise by yet another army of hostile legendary creatures. Arthur wondered why. Yes, he was certainly going to make Merlin pay for this appalling breach of decorum, but Arthur would never HURT Merlin. Surely Gaius knew that.

Merlin wasn't paying his King the slightest bit of attention. Instead, his eyes were on Mordred. The young knight stood and announced, "I have magic. With your permission, my Lord, I will aid the Druids."

Arthur stood too, his head reeling. Gwen clutched his arm. A shock, that Mordred hadn't told him. But not a complete surprise...Arthur had known that the youth was a Druid. Mordred had never said that he had magic...but Arthur had never asked. Arthur hadn't asked, in part because he had been afraid that the answer might be yes, and Arthur had not wanted to lose the promising young knight. Nor had he wanted to face that someone with magic might have saved his life, gained his trust, and become his friend.

But fate had forced his hand. Nor had fate finished with Arthur for the day.

"Thank you." Merlin said to Mordred, before ordering him about, too. Then and only then did Merlin turn to Arthur.

"Arthur, I'm sorry, but I AM Emrys. I AM magic, and because I am, I can tell you truly, this situation is already Very Bad. We don't have any time to waste."

The King could not move at first. Of all the people in the world, he trusted Gwen and Merlin the most. And only Merlin had never betrayed that trust. Until now. Arthur felt as if he didn't know Merlin, and if he didn't know Merlin...

Merlin, for his part, looked nothing like himself. He was focused; powerful. Someone whom Arthur definitely did not know, and if this was Merlin, if this had been the real Merlin ALL ALONG...

Merlin spoke first, and for a moment Arthur saw the Merlin he knew. "Arthur, are you planning to kill me for being what I am?"

The bluntness of the question startled Arthur into a real answer. That had always been one of Merlin's gifts.

"No. Not really." Arthur replied flatly.

"Great. In that case, why don't you just let us get on with planning how not to get us all killed."

To Arthur's continuing shock and displeasure, Merlin continued to do just that. Arthur, meanwhile, got to deal with a large number of confused and angry counselors, knights, guards, and one irate cook. Apparently, Eshild was a sorcerer, and if Merlin wasn't going to be able to stay in Camelot to protect Gwen and Arthur, then that was Eshild's job. The cook wasn't happy to lose the services of a serving girl she was evidently quite fond of, and Arthur couldn't blame her.

In between convincing his people that THESE magic users were on their side, Arthur stared - and sometimes glared - at Merlin. His familiar manservant, the man he (secretly) considered to be his best friend, still seemed a stranger. A hard, determined, capable man. Darker and more confident than the Merlin Arthur knew, but still unexpectedly kind. Conjuring a flower for a scared little girl as her sorcerer father volunteered to fight the Spirit Army, and telling a page from Leon's fiefdom to stay home, even if he did have magic, because he was too young.

Then Merlin tripped over his own feet, and fell in the dust. He was the same old Merlin, and Arthur couldn't imagine how anyone could ever think him a great and powerful anything. Surely, surely, there had been some mistake, Arthur thought to himself, as Merlin awkwardly got his feet back under him.

"He is the greatest sorcerer who has ever lived. The greatest who will ever live." Gaius commented quietly.

Arthur looked at the physician incredulously. "Merlin?" He managed, still unable to truly believe it.

Gaius shook his head, fondness and worry and amusement dancing in his eyes, "I know. Some days, it still surprises me too." Then Gaius, reinforced by Geoffrey (and Gwaine and Percival, who didn't know anything anyway and should have just kept their mouths shut, and even Leon, who was probably only worried about the little sorcerer page who was apparently a cousin of his), spent the next half hour lecturing Arthur about how he WAS the Once and Future King, and how Merlin was meant to stand at his side. How they were two sides of the same coin, and fated to work together to bring about Albion's golden age. Arthur's anger simmered then boiled within him as he reluctantly listened. What's worse, Arthur couldn't even tell if it was all fury, or part...something else. Worry, maybe. He would have never looked beyond the temper when he was younger, Uther certainly never had. But Arthur was not Uther.

And he'd married Gwen in part because she helped to remind him that he could be a better man than his father. Now she grasped Arthur's hands, and stood on tip toe to whisper to him.

"Arthur, you heard the druid seer." She said urgently, pain and love churning like broken glass in her lovely voice. Arthur thought that Guinevere probably sounded as he had that long ago, awful day, when he'd sent Gwen away for betraying him with Lancelot. "Merlin may well DIE for us today. I'm hurt too, and terribly upset with him. But please, please...don't let your justified anger make your last words be bitter and acrimony. Whatever Merlin has hidden from us, he deserves better of you than that."

Arthur took a deep breath. He remembered the first woman who had told him that he was a better man than his father. Morgana was trying again to destroy them, and that was her choice. But Uther's fears and inflexibility, his harshness and inability to forgive, had been what first put Morgana on the path to becoming the type of sorcerer they had always feared.

As Arthur gazed into his wife's wise, loving eyes, his anchor in any storm, he wondered where he would be, if he had let Gwen's one-time betrayal rob him - and Camelot - of her. Uther might have thought him better off without his commoner wife, but to Arthur it was a future not even worth imagining.

That broke the icy fury which had gripped the King's heart since Merlin first showed this side of himself. He put his forehead down to touch Gwen's for a moment, exchanging a kiss and a silent promise. Then he went to talk to his manservant, his friend. This Merlin, who was powerful and strong, but still familiar and irritatingly endearing. As he watched Merlin pulling the other magic users together and inspiring them to believe that they could actually defeat an army of terrifying spirits, Arthur reflected that this side of Merlin was not so completely unfamiliar. Arthur had seen it before, in fits and starts. Only when matters were at their most dire, but he had seen this Merlin before.

As Arthur approached 'Emrys,' the powerful druids and sorcerers paused like frightened deer. Merlin paused, and met Arthur's eyes as brazenly as ever he had. And that's when it hit Arthur again that this was still his Merlin, because Merlin was a girl. Even about to go face an enemy army, he was even more upset about losing Arthur's trust than Arthur was about having been betrayed.

Arthur reached out and clasped Merlin's arm. "Don't die before I have the chance to tell you, in great detail, how much of an idiot you truly are." He commanded.

"Wouldn't dream of it." Merlin answered lightly, but he didn't fool Arthur. The King knew this man, knew him as intimately as anyone save his wife, and Arthur could plainly see the intense pain and relief and affection as they warred together in the Warlock's blue eyes.

"Good." Arthur said quietly, in the tone that he used to bid farewell to his trusted knights, which turned to vaguely threatening as he added, "That...discussion...may take us quite a bit of time."

Merlin raised his chin, a glint of amusement fleetingly rendering his determined features once again recognizable, before the focused magical warrior took over again, "I - we- have to go. Even speeding up time, it will take hours to meet Morgana and the Death Spirits."

Arthur was a King, and a knight, but it still took everything he had not to wince at the thought of Merlin speeding up time and carrying THEIR whole army with him. Merlin, who dropped Arthur's armor ALL THE TIME.

"Do that carefully." Arthur snapped, "As we're going with you."

"We...oh." Merlin said, surprised and not overly pleased. Arthur didn't particularly care that Merlin was unhappy. In fact, right now, he relished it. It would probably be impossible for Arthur to EVER annoy Merlin as much as Merlin had just shocked him, but Arthur resolved to spend the rest of his life trying. So Arthur ignored the discontented expression on the Warlock's face as he organized his knights, and ordered them to their best to arm and armor the sorcerers. Most of whom seemed both frightened and reassured to have the protection of Camelot's finest conventional soldiers.

Merlin, on the other hand, just looked irritated. And perhaps a bit worried.

"You'd better not." Merlin warned him, after Arthur reiterated to a doubting counselor that he and his knights were, in fact, going with the magic users. "

Frustrated, Merlin continued, "We'll...I'll...just have to protect you too. It will be a distraction. You'll just be in the way."

Arthur only just managed to stop himself from smacking Merlin. One didn't say such things to the King IN FRONT OF HIS ARMY. But Arthur had more decorum than Merlin, so he just promised himself that he would smack Merlin later in private, and replied with a relatively mild but sarcastic, "And yet, somehow the knights of Camelot have always managed to hold our own in the past. Even against magical enemies."

"Umm." Said Merlin, looking slightly over and to the side of Arthur's left shoulder, like he did when he lied. Gwaine snorted, and it suddenly occurred to Arthur that some of their luck over the years hadn't been luck, or their skill alone. It had been Merlin. All along, 'Emrys' had protected him. That sneaky little...

Arthur glared at him. How dare Merlin tell him that Arthur would be nothing but a burden! Arthur had believed Merlin to be little more than a burden in a fight for years, yet Arthur hadn't had the ill-grace to say so. Well, more than once every hour, but certainly not in front of men whom Merlin had been commanding. Which Merlin had never done before, but still...

Awesomely powerful warlock Arthur's deceptive servant and friend might be, but, "I am the King, and we are coming. Otherwise you might still die with an ordinary, non-magical blade in your back, you simpleton."

"Haven't yet." Merlin muttered resentfully under his breath.

"Ha!" Said Arthur. His eyes met Merlin's, and he knew that Merlin also remembered a mace in the Valley of the Fallen Kings, and the week that Arthur had spent believing that Merlin was dead. "It is not a matter which is up for discussion."

And yet still the insubordinate idiot protested.

"But..."

"Merlin?" Arthur demanded, falling into a familiar pattern of demanding at least the appearance of obedience from his cheeky but somehow surprisingly indispensable manservant.

Merlin sighed. "Yes, shutting up."

They rode out from Camelot. Arthur had lost track of the times he had left Camelot to face some dire threat, Merlin's familiar, complaining presence at his side. This time was different, but also...not. Merlin still rode beside him again, and Merlin again looked like he was going to be sick.

"Stop being such a little girl, Merlin." Arthur said snidely, before complaining,"If you're as powerful as they say, and you have all of these druids and other magic users supporting you, this should be just another flower-picking expedition for you."

"I'm afraid that they'll just get in my way worse than you usually do." Merlin confessed tensely,"I've never used magic in a coordinated attack before. I've always been alone."

Arthur bit his tongue to avoid commenting on the idiocy of that. From Arthur's perspective as a trained warrior, it sounded like a potential disaster. Having a fighter skilled in single combat, waging war in concert with his brother knights for the first time - Arthur would never let a knight that green into combat. Arthur might still be furious that fate- and Merlin - had forced his hand in regards to magic, but he'd be cursed as a fool if he'd ever again let Merlin fight for him again, not without more preparation.

Arthur smiled tightly, "Merlin, I look forward to remedying that appalling flaw in your training. ." And Arthur found that he really did. In fact, the thought of running Merlin and Mordred both ragged in training with his knights to see what they could do with their magic really, really appealed to the King. But they were upon Morgana's army of dark, shifting spirits, and it was time.

"Now," Arthur said, indicating the field of horrors with a sweep of his arm, as if it were only a floor to be polished or a stable to be mucked, "get off your lazy bum and take care of this lot."

Merlin's mouth twitched into a reluctant smile which Arthur knew as well as his own, then the Warlock's eyes turned gold and Arthur fought the impulse to flinch away. Merlin fortunately hadn't noticed, he was concentrating on the enemy. Pulling it together, like he always had, when had really needed him.

Arthur sat back, and watched. Always before, Arthur had known that their victory would rest on his skill, but knowing that Merlin had faith in him had strengthened Arthur's arm more times than he could count. And now, now they would win this day because Merlin had the skill, and Arthur the faith. And they would get past this - past Merlin having hidden who he was for years. Not because it was their fate, but because they were, in some strange sense of the word, friends. And Arthur didn't abandon his friends just because they'd failed him. After all, Arthur wasn't his father.

8


End file.
